Optimizing Data Communication: Milvus Embraces NATS Messaging

Milvus, an open-source vector database, has introduced NATS messaging integration in its latest version 2.3. This feature enhances the handling of substantial data volumes and complex scenarios compared to its predecessor, RocksMQ. NATS is a distributed system connectivity technology implemented in Go that supports various communication modes like Request-Reply and Publish-Subscribe across systems. Milvus 2.3 offers a new control option, mq.type, which allows users to specify the type of MQ they want to use. To enable NATS, set mq.type=natsmq. The migration from RocksMQ to NATS is seamless and involves steps like stopping write operations, flushing data, modifying configurations, and verifying the migration through Milvus logs. Performance testing results show that NATS outperforms RocksMQ for larger data packets (> 64kb), offering much faster response times. In extensive testing with a 100 million vectors dataset, NATS showcased lower vector search and query latency compared to RocksMQ.